It might surprise you to learn that by the narrowest of margins, the team turned in its best percentile performance of the season in the bowl game, but at 77%, it wasn’t exactly anything to write home about. More surprising is the discovery that the Nicholls game turned out not to be the worst performance of 2016; that honor goes instead to the Ole Miss effort (or, more accurately, lack thereof).

There aren’t many things that jump out at me, but a few items are worth mentioning: the offense, proving to be neither explosive (96th) nor efficient (82nd); situational stats showing the team lagged in the second quarter all season, but had its best showing in the fourth (does S&C deserve some credit?); and the absolutely putrid yardage numbers turned in by the kick returners (anyone who returned a kickoff out of the end zone committed return malpractice).

one need not be a sabrematrician to have noticed that this year’s UGA football team was plagued by uneven effort, uneven production and uneven results. Beat UNC and Auburn? Good. Lose to Vandy and Tech? Bad. Come from behind to beat a bad Missouri team on the road? Good (better to win ugly than to lose). Struggle to beat a bad Nicholls State team at home? Bad-ish (still better to win than to lose).

We could have been about anything from 10-2 to 4-8 this year, which I guess makes the 7-5 regular season record about right, according to Bill Parcells. Let’s hope all the incoming talent and another year of The Process shows substantial improvement next year. There’s a lot of room for improvement.

The spread on S&P+ really illustrated how elite the teams at the top were and how mediocre the rest of the field was. Spread from #1 Alabama to #10 Oklahoma was 14.6 points. Starting with #25 NC State, you have to drop to #80 Arkansas State to have that same spread. I think it basically shows us that one more good performance could dramatically swing where you land in the middle of the field, but there was just a lot of mediocrity this year.

That’s what I’m driving at… not because I’m trying to make our season look better, but because I’m just generally curious.

It would seem that even within the Power 5 conferences, there is a clear bifurcation taking place–largely, I’d venture to wager, along the lines of infrastructure/support (to tie in with the other thread).

Hopefully Connelly is accounting for aberrant performances like that so that you can always ‘dig yourself out’. After all, the idea is to be accurate to predict outcomes, not to punish teams. Using geometric means instead of arithmetic means would do the trick (e.g. the geometric mean for [4,4,5,6,100] = 8.6, rather than 23.6 that you would get with an arithmetic mean).

Having watched a ton of games/kickoffs since the 25 yard line option was given for kicks into the end zone, there would have to be some very compelling reasons for any returner bringing ANY kickoff out of the end zone without me benching him. I have watched it time after time and estimate less than 10% make it to what is given for free! And many are not even close, especially if you get the, tiresome, block in the back call which would usually be avoided by taking a knee. And if you fumble and lose possession, oh boy! Take the 25 if they give it to you…..please.

‘Mediocre’ seems generous. Our worst ever S&P+ finish was 34th in 2006. So we doubled our worst ever ranking in Kirby’s first outing. Programs like Georgia should literally never finish within 2 spots of a 3-9 Utah State team.

More of that falloff was due to Chaney more than Kirby. And that is my biggest concern for next year, we will be more talented but have the same “governor” on our offense….set at about 20 MPH. Put him on the staff and hire a real OC to give these kids a chance. Will be better in 2018 under Chaney? How could we be worse?

Quote Of The Day

“We still have not played our best,” Smart said of his defense. “We still have guys that do not strike blockers the right way and do it the right way consistently. We have a couple guys that turn down hits. I know, to you guys, we’re looking at stats and the numbers, but there are several plays in that game that are this far from being the other way [if] we don’t do it right, and we’ve got to make those plays.” — AJ-C, 9/25/17